Link Building Techniques & Tips

Ever since I arrived here at Bronco (Britain’s brightest search engine marketing company – sign up today!) it’s been bugging the hell out of me that a post (now deleted) on Dave’s blog ranks for ‘link building’. Not that it’s atrocious or anything, but it’s titled as “top 20 tips” and stops after 4 and for that reason alone it itches like a phantom limb. And despite that it has attracted 60 comments, lots of whom look like they were hoping to get a link out of it. If I wasn’t balding, I’d be tearing out my hair.

Anyway, because the world is just crying out for yet another link building guide, here’s my own updated take so it’s off my chest and I can go make a cuppa in peace.

Say something interesting.
You’d think this was a no-brainer in 2009, but I still see lots of people thinking that hiring a new sales person is interesting enough to warrant a press release. It isn’t. The real key is being prepared to go off-brand. If your marketing/brand guys throw their hands up in horror at the thought of not using the right “corporate tone”, then you can probably discount this. Your loss.

Subtly draw attention to the interesting things you’re saying.
You can do this chicken/egg or egg/chicken. Up to you. But if something’s happening in your market, make a point of finding someone else’s content and disagreeing with it. Leave a comment about how you disagree. Chances are you get a nofollowed link from the comments but what you’re actually after is people reblogging the “dispute,” quoting and linking to you as they do so. If you’d prefer to drive the debate, land the first blow with something humourous or unconventional in its take on things. Some unkind souls have suggested that Powazek’s hissy fit a couple of weeks back was nothing more than this principle made flesh. So his name carries bad vibes in the SEO community? Big deal. He’s still got those links – and remember, that’s what we’re after here.

Tangential markets.
You sell guttering. There is no great demand for content about guttering. Guttering’s dull. But people are very much into DIY. It’s an old lesson, but find out what people are asking and use your site to answer it. Yahoo Answers, forums and even Facebook are good starting points.

Directories.
It’s pretty bad that the directory model is still with us and very, very few directories offer equity but there’s still a couple of reasons to do it. Firstly, you can throw some sand in the eyes of other people looking at your backlinks but also it’s really the only “legitimate” way to build volume outside train scripts and all that horrible crap we’ve all been trying to get away from for the last few years.

Buy links.Yeah. I know. Google says ‘no’ – I’m just putting it out there as an option. Sites sell advertising, which is a legitimate way for them to monetise their properties. Buying that advertising in an SEO friendly format is a win-win all round. Just don’t send a crappy, ungrammatical email reading “Hi! I’d like to buy a links from your great budgerigar websites.” Tertiary stuff, but you and I both know its happening right now in your market and you can fight it within ‘the rules’.

Content networks.
Mass content building is an expensive game for the long haul – but if you want niche content that your competitors can’t get at, it’s still a good proposition.You can use all kinds of strategies to linkbuild to these sites, knowing that they’ll act to protect your target sites in case anything goes bad. But proper content and domains – with all the management and quality control that entails – isn’t the cheap option. Don’t scrape. Don’t copy. Don’t cheat.

Think demographics.If you are buying advertising on other sites, chances are there’s not too much available in your market. Frankly, you’ll probably find it stuffed with affiliates, splogs, bloody articles and so-so press releases. So step back, consider who might use your product and think about where else you might find them. Whole new vistas of opportunity should open up when you realise that, for example, people who go to psychics are also prone to cat ownership (I’m just saying).

Don’t discount the nofollow links.
Which sounds more “natural” to you? A site with 3000 followed links or a site with 2400 nofollowed links and 600 followed? Well, duh.The infrastructure of the web is being subtly changed by the nofollow attribute. If your links don’t include a proportion of nofollows you could easily end up on Google’s radar. Just a thought. Also, nofollows can mean traffic, traffic can mean links. Don’t think everything has to be a clean, anchor text link all you’ll burn your options inside a month. If you’re building links, you need to reach people – and mostly they couldn’t give a fig whether your blog comment was nofollowed. They’ve probably got a life, for one thing.

Competitor backlinks
Chasing your competitors is often a zero-sum game. They got there first, and ‘me too’ doesn’t count for anything. But who knows – maybe they’ve had some smart ideas. Even if emulating them is a dull idea, researching what they’ve done should spark new – and hopefully better – ideas for you. You’ve probably also got out of date data. If they had a link 4 months ago, they might not have renewed and its an opening for you.

Niche sites
Quite often a hobbyist website, personal blog or similar exists that touches on your niche. To find them, look for ideas around what you’re selling. Stay away from obvious keywords when you’re looking for these sites. If you’re in the cruise market, searching for “cruise blog” is just going to bring up 9 million competitor splogs. Search for “my disastrous honeymoon” and you might, if you get lucky, find a woman who spent her honeymoon on the notorious Poseidon cruise of 1977. Actually getting the link might be a trickier proposition. That’s something you can’t cover in a ‘one size fits all’ guide, so you’re on your own there 😉

Trackbacks and pings
Found some great related content on a blog? Have a look through previous posts and see if trackbacks are enabled. If they are, dob them a link in a post and get one straight back.

Satellite sites
If you’re pumping out the content, there’s nothing wrong with putting it on Squidoo, Hubpages etc. In terms of link equity, it’s worth diddly, but it does add relevancy and volume. Also, AdSense and Kontera for the hard up.

Look before you leap
Contacting a belligerent site owner with a track record for outing advertisers is a PR disaster waiting to happen. It takes five minutes to judge the kind of site owner you’re dealing with – and those five minutes could be the difference between you getting outed as a linkbuyer or stepping up a notch in the SERPs.

Share some good resources
Another oldie-but-a-goldie is to bring together a tonne of useful info on a subject into once place. There’ll be an industry ombudsman… a BBC page… something on Wikipedia and some humourous stuff in almost any field you care to name. Pull it together with some added-value commentary and people will link to you as an easy way to avoid writing the piece themselves.

Use social media to spread the word
Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else might use the nofollow attribute like a crazy kind of anti-link condom, but if you’re looking to get the word out on your great content or unique proposition, use them as much as you can. The end game isn’t a redirected, nofollowed, 301d piece of link junk from Twitter, but a nice clean link from a follower or two.

Paul Carpenter

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38 Comments

Leo Fogarty - http://www.leofogarty.com

I asked Chris Garrett about using pingbacks/trackbacks as a link building technique a couple of weeks ago in a webinar and he dismissed it as having very little equity which I agree directly but I still think of it as a good way of publicizing new content and possibly get direct links from doing that

John

Haven’t google just come out and said that nofollow isn’t going to work anymore?, those links with that attribute are going to pass on the link juice whether you like it or not.

Carla Marshall - http://www.sorbetdigital.com

Great article 🙂

rishil - http://designer-watches.org

Love the list Paul. Regarding “Tangential markets” I have in the past go involved with a lot of small businesses that were in these fields… overtime their content strategy grew to this post http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/small-business-seo-content-strategies which incedentally led to good niche linking as content in the market is generally limited…

Refreshing article, however a bit confused on this point: “Chasing your competitors is often a zero-sum game. They got there first, and ‘me too’ doesn’t count for anything.” Are you saying that getting links your competitors have is a waste of time? Id dispute that (see point 2 😉 )

William Alvarez - http://www.williamalvarez.com

I could never get tired of reading these kind of recommendations, I’ve came across hundreds of them that are being released on a daily basis, they all give you new ideas on how to get your awesome links while in many cases the authors repeat the same practices from one list to the next. There’s no magic formula on this, but it’s up to the SEO strategist or the so called “link builder” to come up with brilliant ideas on what to do. Ultimately, the smartest people will find a way to get a link. David’s recommendations are the most common, and I can say they are effective, just play your cards right and enjoy the results. One thing that I should mention is that you have to be consistent and never stop, it’s not a one time thing and they all should be executed simultaneously, so if one of them fails, you are still backing up your campaign with the other one.

Cory Howell - http://www.morepro.com/

The “tangential markets” idea is one of the best, but clients are often responsible for holding up these types of content/link development ideas. Creating unique content and links within the market are key, but if your client can’t get past their own limited knowledge re: what works in SEO/marketing, then you’re fighting an uphill battle.

Great list Dave.

paul carpenter - http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk

@Chris Gedge
Yeah – I might have been overstating things a little 🙂

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Gareth James - http://www.seo-doctor.co.uk/

Paul, I agree that going after competitor’s backlinks is over rated. You will get some links, but there is also the timescale of going through a large backlink data report.

Disagree though on Satellite sites having low link equity, you can just build some crappy links to these pages. By piggybacking on the domain’s authority, you can also get these individual pages to rank well.

I have to agree with Gareth, we have seen some great results from building satellite sites. Not the best sites, but all original content with some average links pointing to them. A lot of effort, but one way to control things.

robert - http://www.seomarketingireland.eu

This is precisely what I have been looking for, an article that would hit the nail in my head. Thanks for sharing this post here.

Nick - http://apple.needpounds.co.uk

Thanks. Some good info there

Roger Bert

Hey Paul
A great refreshing read. A tip that Dave shared in one of the conferences about calling the webmasters instead of emailing them works great too.
Rog

Amelia Vargo

This is a really excellent link building guide. I really enjoyed reading it. I haven’t particularly learned anything new, but it’s good to have your instincts reaffirmed. Thanks!

agnes - http://www.hsastudios.com

Provided very nice link building techniques and tips.Thanks for sharing.

James T

I like your work. Following you might be a good reason for me to open a Twitter account. Keep going I’ll follow you shortly.

Simon Wharton - http://blog.pushon.co.uk

A useful post. Not necessarily anything new but it’s amazing how often being reminded of simple and effective techniques cam get you back on track again.
One technique we have used pretty effectively is looking for links that have been pointed at the wrong domain. How so? We have a client who have a domain that can easily be mis spelt. So we looked for those mis spellings. Obviously we find some squatters on those domains and where possible we try and move them on. But the client is such that their brand develops natural conversation and linkage. We check the back links to these mis spelt domains and where possible, ask the genuine linkers to redirect to the proper domain. Generally we find these very natural links are highly on topic as well, so really worth the effort.

i think that people will forget about nofollow links too some of the links that bring me the most referers are from nofollow links. i have also seen stuff with hidden text around links (from decent SEOs) and i dint think that was supposed to work so iono what are your thoughts… lolz link to me (i think my site is in my name)

Gchesman - http://www.prscoup.com

First, great post! I’m struggling to get my blog noticed and these are excellent tips. Second, can you discuss backlinks in more detail? I feel there’s a component I’m missing.

SEO Firma - http://www.seofirma.dk

Great post – I like the way you look at NoFollow

Content Marketing: Yes, this is a Content Scrape. Get Over it! - pingback

[…] are saturated and you’re swimming in an ocean of Same – who really needs another article on link building, […]

Brilliant tips! Thanks for sharing. It’s also worth thinking about using public relations to add to your overall link-building campaign.

Draft a press release about yourself or your business, ensure that it’s interesting and newsworthy and target relevant online media.

Don’t forget to hyperlink any keywords within your press release that match the keywords/search terms on your own website. Instant credibility as well as helping to drive more traffic to your site.

adam christian - http://www.mushtaqtravel.co.uk

very descriptive information indeed, some of these seo techniques do work but take some time before you get the result.

GarethMc

Can anyone answer my question about Best of the Web – I contacted them for a quote to get 40 of our offices listed in the corresponding sections and after a few emails back and forth they’ve quoted me a figure of $4000. Kerching.

I’ve covered all the other bases listed in Paul’s article but after attending the recent SES Course in London I thought I’d look into BOTW.

My offices are beginning to creep up the SERPs but I wonder if a link from this directory would catapult them into the 1st page from the 2nd in Google, Scream! and Bling.

@Gareth, I think BOTW does help but not in the way you are expecting them to. Look for better ways to build inbound links in a natural way, not from directory submissions. The value from these directories is so diluted that you can’t expect to move up in rankings for your websites. If you’re lucky and people search for your services on BOTW, you’ll get some traffic.

You are talking about 40 websites, that’s why they will charge $4,000 total ($99.99 each?). With that money you can do a lot of different things like content development, article contributions, blogs, PR, etc.

Gareth - http://www.seo-doctor.co.uk/

@GarethMC – yer I think you could get much better value for that money.

GarethMc

@William & Gareth – thanks guys

Brian - http://www.poldon.com

Paul,

Great article! Our of curiosity, where do you find you spend the most time and effort when building links? Is it sending emails or calling site owners, doing research, or something else? It seems like all of the articles I see are about where to get some links, but not much about the how’s of actually obtaining the desired links or how willing people are to give them. Thanks!

Maria Cimagala - http://www.sbtjapan.com

After I created contents and or an approved articles I share it in my different social bookmarking accounts. And when I created a video for our website I submitted it to youtube and metacafe and then I spread the link in different selective social bookmarking and social networking websites. Though I know the result will take sometime, I’m just being patience with this and continue what I’m doing. ^_^

Sam.Jones - http://www.carjunction.com

This one is an Amazing and Refreshing article and am sharing this article to my social networks and Bookmarking websites. Obviously this type of information will help in improving website backlinks and improving Traffic. Thanks for sharing this post here.

Rhonda

Hey! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with SEO?
I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very
good results. If you know of any please share. Appreciate it!

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